


The Subject of True Love

by Shadaras



Category: The Wind City
Genre: F/F, Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-22
Updated: 2013-11-22
Packaged: 2018-01-02 07:39:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1054202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadaras/pseuds/Shadaras
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Explaining the concept of 'love' to an atua is hard. It's hard and Tony doesn't like it, except that, really, she does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Subject of True Love

**Author's Note:**

> newly published book! gets it here! http://www.steampress.co.nz/wind.html

It took them a surprisingly long time to catch on, really. Oh, there were reasons – Tony just hadn’t considered that she might like girls as much as guys, and Hinewai only had the one story of her sister and a mortal man to think about – but _even so_.

 They only spent most of their time laughing together. Sometimes they went hunting (sea or land, it didn’t matter; they took their joy where they could find it, in fish and humanfolk alike), or tried to explain cultural differences that they thought so obvious they didn’t have the words for (like why it was a tradition to make wishes on birthday candles, for instance), or did things so incredibly normal it only seemed odd when you realized how utterly unhuman they were, to be doing things like shopping for clothes or going out for a drink with friends (who were equally unhuman, of course).

But it wasn’t any of those things that led them to realize that true love didn’t need to be a guy and a girl. It wasn’t even something cheesy, like saving each other’s life (they did that plenty, in a way; though it was closer to keeping the other from injury, as it was rather hard for them to be mortally wounded without fire, and very few humans knew that particular trick); it was really just the simple act of watching bad TV shows together, and curling up on the couch, and slowly realizing that they were getting closer together, until Hinewai was lying on Tony, and Tony’s arms were wrapped around Hinewai’s chest, and their heads were right next to each other and resting on the arm of the couch, and oh they looked just like that couple on the show, didn’t they.

That was what did it, really. There was a slow moment of realization, and then Hinewai turned to Tony and asked, in that still-stilted way of hers, “Tony, does love require a man and a woman?”

Tony blinked, waking up out of the daze watching TV with Hinewai put her in to, and, once her mind had caught up with the question, watched all her words disappear right out of her mouth, blocked by a weird surge in her chest. “Um,” she said, very eloquently.

Hinewai didn’t say anything, just watched her, patient and unblinking with those seadeep black eyes.

“No,” Tony said, after a while, after the rising tide of _oh god what is going on why did she mention this I thought that was just the spell then but might it actually be real oh fuck fuck fuck_ had passed enough to speak. “It doesn’t.”

“Oh.”

There was silence but for the TV (meaningless words about love, platitudes that nobody listens to because they’ve heard it all a hundred times before, unless they’re Hinewai, unless they’re part of the patupaiarehe and have only been in the city for a year at most, and far less than that in truth) while Hinewai digested that.

Tony shifted under her friend’s (love’s?) weight, uncomfortable and awkward now in a way that their cuddling had never been, before. It wasn’t weird for friends (especially female friends) to end up cuddling. Physical contact was great. There wasn’t anything strange about it at all. Even if they weren’t human. Even if there _was_ the question of true love and Hinewai’s search for it (which hadn’t been mentioned for months before now, strange how she hadn’t noticed that before). Even if there had been that time, when they hadn’t known each other yet, not really, while she was under the patupaiarehe’s spell, where she’d had _such_ a crush on her, but that had gone away with the spell’s lifting, hadn’t it?

But even as Tony dithered, she didn’t move. It was too comfortable, the way they were, even with the growing tension of unsureness that was rising, inevitable as the tide, to a foregone conclusion:

“I think,” Hinewai said, her voice slow and soft as the mist she came from, “that you are my true love.”

The words made it true. There was no music, no spell, nothing but the solid words and the confidence behind them that could only come from time and a blindfold being removed. There was nothing but the cold water turning warm and welcome, and the way Tony turned to her fae and kissed her (gentle and soft, nothing more than a press of lips, really; Hinewai wouldn’t understand even as it was, and no doubt there would be a conversation later, of the many kinds of kissing, but… for now this was good, this would do, this was a way to mark it, this decision that had been reached, this agreement they had made).

And Hinewai smiled, a proper human smile, and they stayed there, curled up together, content, for quite a while before Hinewai began questioning Tony about love.


End file.
